"Say, Laury, I jis' wanted to say I'm goin' to Mis' Lenwell's first. Good-by." Stellar Bahrr's voice, sharp and thin, cut through the vines. As Laura turned to reply Jerry saw her fair face redden, and her voice was almost harsh as she spoke clearly, to be well heard. "I remember now. I must have put it in there by mistake when you were down-town yesterday afternoon. I guess I thought it was my bag." Mrs. Bahrr, turning to go, had caught sight of Jerry's hand-bag through the leaves, and remembered perfectly that Jerry had carried it with her down-town the day before, and how well it matched the beaded trimming of her parasol, her wide-brimmed chiffon hat, and the sequins of her sash trimmings against her silk walking-skirt. Jerry recalled taking the bag with her, too, and she recalled just then what Mrs. Stellar Bahrr had hinted about Laura not wanting York to admire other women. Why did that thought come to the girl's mind just now? Was the wish of the evil mind of the woman hitching away across lots and corkscrewing down alleyways projecting itself so far as this? XI AN INTERLUDE IN "EDEN" An interlude should be brief. This one ran through a few midsummer days with amazing rapidity, considering that in its duration the current of a life was changed from one channel, whither it had been tending for almost a quarter of a century, to another and widely different course that ran away from the very goal-mark of all its years of inspiring ambition. It was late afternoon of a July day. Jerusha Darby sat in the rose-arbor, fanning and rocking in rhythmic motion. The rose-vines had ceased to bloom. Their thinning foliage was augmented now by the heavier shade of thrifty moon-vines. Midsummer found "Eden" no less restful and luxuriant in its July setting than it was in the freshness of June. The afternoon train had crawled lazily up the Winnowoc Valley on schedule time, permitting Eugene Wellington, in white flannels, white oxfords, and pink-pin-striped white silk shirt, fresh from shave and shower-bath, to come on schedule time to the rose-arbor for a conference with Mrs. Darby. The swift flow of events had not outwardly affected the handsome young man. The time of the early June roses had found him poor in worldly goods, but rich in a trained mind, a developed genius, a yearning after all things beautiful, a faith in divine Providence, abounding confidence in his own power to win to the mastery in his beloved art, and glorying in his freedom to do the thing he chose to do. It found him in love, and the almost accepted lover of a beautiful, wilful, magnetic girl--a girl with a sturdy courage in things wherein he was lacking; a frivolous, untrained girl, yet with surprising dependableness in any crisis. It found him the favorite nephew of a quiet, uninteresting, rich old money-grubbing uncle and his dominant, but highly approving wife, whose elegant home was always open to him the while he felt himself a pensioner on its hospitality.